ME/CFS, Long Covid, and Disconnection From the Self
In this blog post over at Psychology Today, I take a look at the ways in which our personality traits may predispose us to becoming unwell with illnesses like ME/CFS and long Covid. Here is an excerpt:
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and long Covid are complex and often disabling health conditions. They are multifactorial, with research demonstrating that common triggers for these overlapping illnesses include different forms of biological and psychosocial stressors: infections, major life events, and exposure to toxins.
Physical symptoms are undeniably real. Meanwhile, clinicians and researchers have observed a cluster of personality traits that are present in many people living with these illnesses. A striking number of people affected by these conditions have traits such as perfectionism, people pleasing, hyper-responsibility, self-sacrifice, a high drive to achieve, and a strong aversion to letting other people down.
Related to these traits, research also suggests that people living with ME/CFS may be more likely to suppress emotions.
This has led some to hypothesise that personality traits may themselves contribute to a person’s vulnerability to becoming ill. The current research on this question is ambiguous. A group of Dutch researchers reviewing 16 studies concluded that:
“Although personality seems to play a role in CFS, it is difficult to draw general conclusions on the relation between personality and CFS”.
Understanding, not blame
At this point, you may well feel uncomfortable with the idea that our personality traits could somehow contribute to something as life-altering and devastating as becoming unwell with a chronic illness. It may feel blaming and stigmatising. I fully understand and respect this concern.
So let me be clear: I am not suggesting that personality traits constitute a singular cause for these illnesses. However, as someone who has historically identified with all the traits listed above, and who has recovered from ME/CFS and long Covid, and now works with other people living with these conditions — I have learned to be curious about this connection. As Gabor Maté has written on this subject:
"Asserting that features of the personality contribute to the onset of illness and, more generally, perceiving connections between traits, emotions, developmental histories, and disease is not to lay blame. It is to understand the bigger picture for the purposes of prevention and healing – and ultimately for the sake of self-acceptance and self-forgiveness.”
It is also worth noting that researchers have identified similar personality traits as vulnerability factors in many other, less contested, physical illnesses, from cancer to multiple sclerosis. Back in 1987, psychologist Lydia Temoshok proposed the “type C” personality, in response to interviews with 150 people with melanoma. She identified people in this group as consistently being: “excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, uncomplaining and unassertive”.
Ways of meeting the world
Whereas the language of “personality trait" may give the impression of immutability, I have come to understand self-sacrificing, people pleasing, and so forth, not as psychic pillars firmly set in stone, but rather as learned patterns of behaviour.
Why would anyone learn to ignore their emotions, to default to self-suppression, and to rigidly meet the needs of others before oneself? For Gabor Maté, "nobody is born with such traits. They invariably stem from coping mechanisms to developmental trauma, beginning with self-abnegation in early childhood.”
Head over to Psychology Today to read the full post.
